The Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative is a five-year program, supported by Swiss bank UBS in which the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation identifies and works with artists, curators and educators from South and Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East and North Africa to expand its reach in the international art world. For each of the three phases of the project, the museum invites one curator from the chosen region to the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York City for a two-year curatorial residency, where he or she works with a team of Guggenheim staff to identify new artworks that reflect the range of talents in their parts of the world. The resident curators organize international touring exhibitions that highlight these artworks and help organize educational activities. The Foundation acquires these artworks for its permanent collection and includes them as the focus of exhibitions that open at the museum in New York and subsequently travel to two other cultural institutions or other venues around the world. The Foundation supplements the exhibitions with a series of public and online programs, and supports cross-cultural exchange and collaboration between staff members of the institutions hosting the exhibitions. UBS is reportedly contributing more than $40 million to the project to pay for its activities and the art acquisitions. Foundation director Richard Armstrong commented: "We are hoping to challenge our Western-centric view of art history."
Phase 1: South and Southeast Asia
The first exhibition, No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia is curated by June Yap. Yap has worked for six years in the curatorial departments of modern and contemporary art museums, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum. She gathered art from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and India for No Country. The exhibition was shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2013, the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre from October 2013 to February 2014, and Singapore's Centre for Contemporary Art from May to July 2014. In this show, the artists featured are as follows:
The second exhibition of the project, Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, focuses on art from Latin America and is curated by Pablo León de la Barra. On display are works by 40 artists representing 15 countries in Latin America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. The artworks are organized around five themes: Conceptualism and its Legacies, Tropicologies, Political Activism, Modernism and its Failures, and Participation/Emancipation. The show ran at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York from June 13 to October 1, 2014, at Museo Jumex in Mexico City from November 19, 2015 to February 7, 2016, and recently opened at the South London Gallery in Camberwell, London on June 10, 2016 and will be on view until September 4, 2016. In this show, the artists featured are as follows:
In conjunction with Under the Same Sun, Alfredo Jaar's A Logo for America, an animation for an electronic billboard in Times Square, was shown again in Times Square in August 2014 as part of Times Square Alliance's "Midnight Moments" series. Artist Federico Herrero, whose work is displayed in Under the Same Sun, completed a residency at the South London Gallery from May to June 2016, during which he engaged with the local residents of Pelican Estate, Peckham and created a site-specific work in the children's playground of the community.
The UBS MAP Global Art Initiative culminates in a third and final exhibition titled, But a Storm is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa, curated by Sara Raza. The show opened on April 29, 2016 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City and will be on view until October 5, 2016. The exhibition will travel to Istanbul's Pera Museum in 2017. In this show, the artists featured are as follows:
Hello Guggenheim: Film and Video Curated by Bidoun Projects was a four-week program of film and videos shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in May 2016 about the politics and power of the moving image, organized by Bidoun Projects.
